How to Read a CS Research Paper? Philip W. L. Fong

1 Comprehension

What is the research problem the paper attempts to address? What are the claimed contributions of the paper? How do the authors substantiate their claims? What are the conclusions?

What is the research problem the paper attempts to address? What is the motivation of the research work? Is there a crisis in the research field that the paper attempts to resolve? Is the research work attempting to overcome the weaknesses of existing approaches? Is an existing research paradigm challenged? In short, what is the niche of the paper?

What are the claimed contributions of the paper? What is new in this paper? A new question is asked? A new understanding of the research problem? A new methodology for solving problems? A new algorithm? A new breed of software tools or systems? A new experimental method? A new proof technique? A new formalism or notation? A new evidence to substantiate or disprove a previously published claim? A new research area? In short, what is original about this paper?

How do the authors substantiate their claims? What is the methodology adopted to substantiate the claims? What is the argument of the paper? What are the major theorems? What experiments are conducted? Data analyses? Simulations? Benchmarks? User studies? Case studies? Examples? In short, what makes the claims scientific (as opposed to being mere opinions)? Alternatively, what makes it a research paper rather than a science fiction?

What are the conclusions? Shall the standard practice of the field be changed as a result of the new findings? Is the result generalizable? Can the result be applied to other areas of the field? What are the open problems? In short, what are the lessons one can learn from the paper?

2 Evaluation

Is the research problem significant? Are the contributions significant? Are the claims valid?

Is the research problem significant? Is the work scratching minor itches? Are the authors solving artificial problems (aka strawman)? Does the work enable practical applications, deepen understanding, or explore new design space?

Are the contributions significant? Is the paper worth reading? Are the authors simply repeating the state of the art? Are there real surprises? Are the authors aware of the relation of their work to existing literature? Is the paper addressing a well-known open problem?

Are the claims valid? Have the authors been cutting corners (intentionally or unintentionally)? Has the right theorem been proven? Errors in proofs? Problematic experimental setup? Confounding factors? Unrealistic, artificial benchmarks? Comparing apples and oranges? Methodological misunderstanding? Do the numbers add up? Are the generalizations valid? Are the claims modest enough?

3 Synthesis

What is the crux of the research problem? What are some alternative approaches to address the research problem? What is a better way to substantiate the claim of the authors? What is a good argument against the case made by the authors? How can the research results be improved? Can the research results be applied to another context? What are the open problems raised by this work? Bottomline: Can we do better than the authors?

4 Paper Review

Summary Evaluation Synthesis

Summary Give a brief summary of the work in your own words. This section demonstrates your understanding of the paper, and as such it should answer the four questions outlined in Section 1. It is imperative that you use your own words to summarize the paper. Another way to think of it is that you are writing an alternative, elaborate abstract for the paper.

Evaluation Evaluate the work by answering the questions outlined in Section 2. Learn to be fair: point out both the strengths and weaknesses of the work. If you are reading a classical paper that has been published for a while, make sure you are reading the paper in the right historical context: What seems to be obvious now might have been ground-breaking then.

Synthesis Generate any interesting thoughts you have on the work by consulting the list of questions in Section 3.

5 Related Work

Related Work - References [1] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren. How to Read a Book. Simon and Schuster Trade, [2] Allen S. Lee. Reviewing a manuscript for publication. [3] Gail Murphy and Bill Griswold. How to read an engineering research paper. murphy/cpsc507/winter02/documents/reading-eval.htm. [4] Ian Parberry. A guide for new referees in theoretical computer science. Information and Computation, 112(1):96–116, [5] Alan Jay Smith. The task of the referee. IEEE Computer, 23(4):65–71, April 1990.